Curebit not only screwed up bad, but they kept digging deeper and deeper in their debate. I'm really glad they're being called for with directness and severity. You should be too.
I recently had a conversation with one of the friendliest businesses I patronize (an espresso bar in Sydney). The owner swore like a sailor about an ex-staff member who'd come back with the keys he'd "lost", and stolen from him in full view of the security cameras.
You need to know our audience, and to have chosen the personality you're prepared to project as your businesses spokesperson, but DHH (and Ben) have clearly both chosen to be perceived as "guys who'll use strong language when people steal from them". That choice might not "work" if you're in the clergy, or a school principal, but making that choice as a café owner or software company spokesperson falls a long way short of "not acceptable", at least in my book.
It's always impossible to measure the _really_ interesting stuff, but I wonder if 37Signals earned more benefit from people thinking things like "DHH is _really_ passionate about his business." than they lost from people who though "he used curse words on Twitter, I don't want to do business with him anymore"? (Patrick? How do ou a/b test founder personalities for conversion rate? ;-)
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I'd personally reserve a moniker like "fucking scumbags" for people who would steal from their family/friends to fuel a coke habit. Or maybe Go Daddy.
EDIT: ok, I'll now admit that I misunderstood the term "ad hominem attack". A more appropriate definition would be "overly-generalized insult left open to interpretation", e.g. "douchebag". Something along the lines of "fucking lazy hack" would probably have been more accurate.
"typical East Coast bullshit." is how Steve Jobs described this sort of drivel.
We've entered an age of clearer, more direct and transparent communications. There's no time nor need for formalities.
37signals is very open about being an opinionated company. Their blog is quite happy to take a stance, they've always enjoyed mixing it up, and they've never seemed to have an issue with telling people "don't like it, don't use our products".
Oh wait.
Here's the thing: this is how they've built their company. This is the kind of thing they say.
It's totally "acceptable" for DHH to tweet whatever the hell he wants, because that's the image he cultivated. That's what people love him for. That's why they follow him on Twitter, attend his talk, buy the books he cowrote.
You can dislike it all you like - nobody's forcing you to read it, nor forcing you to talk that way. But where on earth do you get off saying it's "unacceptable"?
Which means that it's perfectly integral and congruent for DHH to call somebody a "fucking scumbag" when that person steals from DHH's company. His values, and his words, and his actions all line up perfectly. He is behaving exactly like himself.
Even if you fall back on the dictionary definition of "the quality of being honest and having strong moral character," it fits.
Just because YOU don't think somebody should use a certain word doesn't mean they lack integrity. It also doesn't mean that anyone else cares.
So now using some design without permission is called stealing? so, copyright infringement is stealing or not?
I've posted elsewhere how the Curebit misstep caused me to form an opinion about the maturity of their product. I'm not going to bother of relating how DHH's response has changed my opinion of the 37Signals business, especially on HN given the ridiculous moderating practices related to anything remotely critical of 37Signals.
/r
I've been thinking this morning about the knee jerk moderation and failure to communicate in this thread. There's a strong undercurrent of "Internet entrepreneur" that makes up HN, and I'd expect the discourse here to reflect the manner in which people communicate in their business endeavours. Knee jerk reactions, pedantry and emotional dogma don't have much place in business.
I'd kinda hoped that there could be some discussion about professionalism, what it means and how we can apply it to what we do. It appears that I expect too much, or the wrong things from HN.
Professionals are judged on appearance and appearance of action: not on what they actually do and the consequences of their actions. Similarly, to act "professionally" often means to act against your personal beliefs, to suppress your emotion, to ignore empathy and to react coldly.
To be "business-like" is often to be cruel and socially irresponsible: that's "just business".
I would like to be judged by my demeanour rather than my appearance and on the consequence of my actions rather than my actions.
used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise.
scumbag |ˈskəmˌbag|
a contemptible or objectionable person.
It's appropriate.
EDIT: here's full context per JackWebbHeller's request:
@dhh The Sharebooster site is serving even more images straight off the Highrise server: http://yfrog.com/oddh4zoj . Fucking scumbags.
An ad hominem is used within the confines of an argument. There is no argument here. He is calling them what they are. They stole, that is clear, the argument is air-tight (they have even apologized).
I wouldn't use this kind of language myself (not in any circumstance), but ad hominem it is not.
(DHH didn't say that using 37Signals assets directly was bad because they were fucking scumbags, just that what they did was bad and they were fucking scumbags as a result.)
With that being said, both sides definitely should have reconsidered their PR strategy. Both being techies, it's reasonable to assume that they should be fully aware of how things like this propagate on the internet.
If I found someone blatantly repurposing something I worked hard to create, I'd have a similar reaction. This guys aren't CXOs of a Fortune 100 company that need to fear how the board and stock holders may react (and god fucking bless 'em for that). They're scrappy guys still hustling like they launched yesterday.
Calling them "fucking scumbags" isn't a cocky response, it's a free reality check. Poor Allan had a pretty significant lapse of judgment, and DHH may have given him the most valuable lesson of his life.
I don't think DHH has had a need to hustle in a while. He could have easily embarrassed cluebit with a witty remark, rather than embarrassing himself at the same time by the choice of language.
Exactly. Guys in his situation don't need to, but they still choose to. When you're playing with that sort of passion and intensity, you defend with vigor. That's embarrassing?
It's not like he drove over to cluebit's office and started smashing shit. He called him/them out. That's it, that's all.
The starched shirts feel a need to make everyone conform to their view.
So sadly, it's never "that's all" when it comes to them. We shall fight them on the shores, etc. etc.
It's cluebit that are scrappy guys still hustling, even if they got over a million in investor money...
It's only in your head that he is embarrassed.
And yes, in my head I do feel embarrassed for him when I see him lowering himself to name-calling over such a trivial issue.
I have no problems with salty language between equal opponents or when the other side is clearly malicious. In this case the opponent is such a pity that it feels akin to someone slapping a 5yr old for scratching their lamborghini.
But what he said was true. This wasn't ad hominem because it wasn't an argument. The argument is clear, Curebit stole, and have apologized. Therefore his reaction is not an attack but an accurate label.
Whether it is "professional" or not is a different story.
Please. If we're going to hold an intelligent debate, you need to work on your analogies.
And the level of incompetence at play here is precisely what makes DHH's reaction feel so out of place. Without thinking anyone could come up with a dozen classy ways to play the situation. Instead he chose the one that makes himself look less than ideal...
And there's nothing morally wrong about fighting back against people who have ripped you off.
If a hughely talented but completely amoral PR specialist had scripted this, perhaps it would have turned out exactly the same way...
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For comparison, when the Oatmeal found his comics stolen, here's how he responded: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk
PS. i'm not defending anyone, but as an outsider i found the response was over the top and allangrant didn't call any names
I understand that there's a large section of the US society that has a significantly lower tolerance for "curse words" than at least my cross section of Australian society, but "fucking scumbag" is pretty close the the terminology I'd use if someone "stole" a bunch of design work like that from my business (I'd not use that terminology quite so publicly, since the other stakeholders where I am wouldn't appreciate it, and I'm happy to self-censor on a business front to meet their expectations...)
This makes the whole debate even stranger. The fella from Curebit messed up in a lot of ways (really, he couldn't even be bothered to host the content himself?), but on a scale of 1 to a million, I would put this whole mess at closer to 1. Let's be frank, any html/css/js you toss online can be sourced, it is the nature of the client side rendering world we live in.
Where do you draw the line, is it not okay to use someone else's javascript function? Is it not okay to use their mix of background colour and fonts? When we start to decide what is and is not okay, we start to create some scary precedence.
"To the users of FunnyJunk: I never had plans to sue FunnyJunk and get it shut down; I just wanted my stolen comics removed -- your admin is a moron who chooses his words about as carefully as a mule chooses where to take a shit."
You might want to go and study some LinkedIn profiles before apologizing for these guys. And as far is DHH is concerned, why would you want to steal from him in the first place. He gave his best work away for free. I'm no fan but I believe he's entitled to call these people out. In whatever tone he deems appropriate. Get used to it if you think following Curebit's steps is the way to go. It's a rough world out there.
Yet Stallman is coddled every time he calls someone "evil" and wishes them dead. Odd that.
Neither you, nor I, know what Stallman wished for or against.
Read your own answer here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3453379
It's a shame that we all can't be polite and friendly and remember pg's golden rule every once in a while, but alas there's not much we can do about it.
Let's spend our time on more important things :)
There have even been lawsuits, some of which Zynga lost.
They make so much money they don't care, and they made that money long before they were public.
And given that they also seem to have stolen someone's logo, seems like they're in need of a lesson.
I am personally not a fan of their attitude, but there are a lot of people enabling them.
I think DHH should have just said that "I am sure it will be resolved and Curebit will do the right thing." instead. The whole situation is just lame.